Customer Reviews

Personal Velocity

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is a quick and easy read. However I feel her characterizations of the working class people are stereotypical and incompletely realized. She does much better with her portraits of those who lead more privileged lives. I have to agree with other reviewers in that her stories just stop as if she doesn't really know how to end them. I can't help wondering if this book would have gotten less attention if Ms. Miller did not have a very famous father (Arthur Miller) and husband (Daniel Day Lewis).

I rarely read contemporary fiction, because it's almost always dissapointing. At [a store] last week I picked up this slim hardcover volume from a stack on the floor, attracted by the bright cover I suppose. I began reading and couldn't stop. It was as if I had stepped inside a world created by a female Raymond Carver -- a world of women of different ages and backgrounds and occupations, each of whom feels absolutely real, each of whom has her motivations stripped bare in a few phrases. Rebecca Miller's style is so direct and unsentimental that it's disorienting at first, but if one sticks with it and gets used to the cadences of her sentences, the result is very powerful. The unflattering, almost Swiftian descriptions of her characters' bodies may be hard to take for some readers, but I think they contribute to a deliberately naturalistic account of contemporary women's lives. My favorite story is that of Bryna, a wife who fantasizes about being profiled in Redbook Magazine. It's a deft little satire on the way in which glossy magazine accounts of celebrity infect the imaginations of American women. This understated collection is like an antidote to the ostentatiously sensitive prose of so many current trade writers.

Yesterday I recommended _Personal Velocity_ to one of my undergraduate students. She had already started reading it and informed me that the author is Arthur Miller's daughter. Perhaps literary talent does run in the blood, because this is an impressive debut.

I always say I don't like short stories but maybe that's because not every author writes like Rebecca Miller. Her language is spare and precise and powerful. There are seven moving and disturbing stories about the lives of six women and one child. The stories are snapshots poised in time. Each character must decide how to survive and whether to change. Miller knows these women well. Highly recommended. (Ms. Miller is the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller and the wife of actor Daniel Day Lewis. A movie is being made from several of the stories.)

I had been looking forward to reading this book for a while, it was well reviewed by many and I was so excited to get my hands on it, so you can only imagine my disapointment when I opened it up to find nothing really there.

The book consists of 7 short stories about women who have some sort of pyschological ailment or another. The stories are just not that good. In seems in her attempts to make these women interesting or enigmatic she forgets to give them a soul. Secondly, these women are not likable, they are weird, self indulgent, self pitying, and mopey. One previous reviewer said it best when she said that the stories don't end, they just stop. Thats so true. Just when you think you may be getting interested in one character the story stops.

This book was such a disapointment. If this is supposed to be a commentary on modern women, we should all be insulted and concerned.

This is an interesting, though creepy group of short stories. Each story centers around a particular woman and her issues. The issues are mostly very dark issues, which is why I use the word "creepy" in my review. Some of the stories very slightly intertwine which is a nice element to the book overall. Rebecca Miller also added a few nice references to the Hudson Valley, New York area (my hometown)- that was a nice find.

Personal Velocity is a collection of 7 stories by the author Rebecca Miller. (daughter of playwright, Arthur Miller) All of the stories have women at their center. Most of the stories are independent, but there are a couple that share characters. I have seen the movie, which only included three of the stories. This may have made me biased, since I got a visual of those three stories.

Greta was about a woman who was planning on leaving her husband and has always had a problem with infidelity. She is always trying to impress her father, who left her mother when she was young. She is a cookbook editor who gets to edit a very popular authors book, and gets involved with him as well.

Delia is a woman who leaves her husband, finally, after continued beatings. She goes from a woman's shelter to an old acquaintence's house. She grew up very promiscuous and hasn't changed that much.

Louisa, who is also promiscuous, (I'm starting to notice a theme here) goes from lover to lover, and leaves when she starts to feel comfortable.

Julianne and Bryna go hand and hand, as Bryna is Julianne's maid. Bryna imagines being interviewed and often talks to herself. She looks at Julianne as being this perfect woman who is married to a poet/writer 15 years her senior. Bryna always wanted to be glamourous, but instead, marries a farmer and lives with him and his strange mother.

Nancy is a child who always has a nanny looking after her, but this nanny is also observing her, to see if she has anything wrong with her, because she once locked another girl in a closet.

Paula is a woman who picked up a hitchhiker after being with a man who traded places with her on the street and got hit by a car. She thinks that this will change her karma.

I liked the way this author writes, because she shows rather than tells, and she writes very simply to tell a deep story.

I liked certain stories more than others, some just grabbed me more, which is why it didn't receive a higher rating.

Basically, it was a little better than ok, but I have read some collections that I like more.

Granted, it must be challenging to be a writer when one's father is Arthur Miller. This book was receiving raves and I was so surprised to discover it was basically downright bad! Unreadable, frankly. I forced my way through the stories. They were full of cliched and vague descriptions, bland dialogue, and too many oh-so-quirky characters. More than one story had flashbacks ( one story had two: A 4 years ago flashback within a 1 year ago flashback). More than one story had a character recounting her dreams. Boring.

Personal Velocity is a dark, stark, insightful and satirical collection of short stories. All seven stories are terrific, but the ones with Greta, Louisa and Paula are, in my opinion, the most riveting and humorous ones in the book. Rebecca Miller has grasped the lives of today's single women down to a tee. She covers all the vital details of modern women -- career, relationships, sex -- with a unique brand of dark humor all her own. This isn't a lighthearted chick lit, but a literary piece of women's fiction. With sharp dialogue, unsentimental language and excellent prose, Miller has written quite a memorable satire. I couldn't recommend this book enough.

The first sentence of the first story grabbed me, and I could not stop reading to find out what happened. To me, that's good story-telling. The second story, about a physically abused wife and mother, was disturbing enough that I thought I would read no further, but hours later I was compelled to read on . . . and on and on, until I had read the entire book. In fact, I am writing a review because I came on-line at Amazon.com to see whether the author had written any books since this. These stories are engrossing and impressively insightful about the lives of seven, very different, contemporary women, a few of whose lives are linked. The term "personal velocity" is a good metaphor for the moving forces in women's lives, both external and internal. As a woman, I found myself and my girlfriends in these women. Reading it, you will experience surprising moments of recognition, and the author renders these familiar truths in astonishingly fresh ways. I hope for more from Rebecca Miller.

The first sentence of the first story grabbed me, and I could not stop reading to find out what happened. To me, that's good story-telling. The second story, about a physically abused wife and mother, was disturbing enough that I thought I would read no further, but hours later I was compelled to read on . . . and on and on, until I had read the entire book. In fact, I am writing a review because I came on-line at Amazon to see whether the author had written any books since this. These stories are engrossing and impressively insightful about the lives of seven, very different, contemporary women, a few of whose lives are linked. The term "personal velocity" is a good metaphor for the moving forces in women's lives, both external and internal. As a woman, I found myself and my girlfriends in these women. Reading it, you will experience surprising moments of recognition, and the author renders these familiar truths in astonishingly fresh ways. I hope for more from Rebecca Miller.